I don't agree, John. We do not hear about every cough, sneeze, incident, just that "something has happened". There was a spate of unusual stuff with no clear information.
We hear on international news all the time, within minutes, about serious incidents, usually stabbings at the moment sadly. Every community in the world will have as much interest in what has happened in the next street as we do.
It is not nosiness, but openness. This is an open society, and without wanting to jeopardise an investigation, why can't information be given?
Frankly, when information is withheld in a criminal process there has to be a very good reason. After all, the basis of criminal law is that an offence has been committed against the whole of society. Criminality is a public offence.
I would repeat that I would not expect or demand that information is given that jeopardises an investigation, but when general information is not forthcoming, you do have to question the "contract" that the individual members of society has with the state.
We do live in a relatively safe place, but that should not have any relevance to openness. Quite the reverse.

Well thanks for that. However, I disagree that I don’t have a perspective.
I actually think the dismantling of the north western rail lines in the 70’s was a strategic mistake. I also think the Island has some incredible heritage, scenery and locations. There are some early signs of some real new impetus in focus on both the enjoyment of locals, and the benefit of tourists.
However;
We are dealing with the here and now. The Island is in a dire mess, across all sectors, and in respect of the horse trams, the time had come to draw a line. DBC actually demonstrated more strategic perspective than IOMG in this case. There are limits to the amount of money that can be literally pissed down the drain, and as we are using the health service in our conversation, 300k equates to around four GP’s or ten nurses.
and where did the suggestion that I knew anything about the health service come from? I only worked alongside practitioners daily, and closely for twenty years, and do so daily now. And as for wider Manx life, working in the public sector, seeing first hand how departments ‘work’ and paying my taxes as a resident. Yes, I suppose you are right - clueless!
and as for the boat in the morning quip - probably the biggest indictment of what remains wrong with the place.
I only offer opinion. I’d be enlightened to hear an expansion of yours some time.
Im sure we all would.

A cynic might suggest that this is our government of control freaks not wanting to answer questions on a major news story or clarify things - a press release at 5 to 5 on the Friday of a Bank Holiday weekend!
Ah well. We are where we are. It is what it is. Lessons will be learned, moving forward.

Cheesy Wheezy,
There is a tendency for some people to take a perfectly reasonable medical diagnostic term and turn it into a term of abuse.Sadly, there have been many. You have no exclusivity or originality there.
The terms degenerate into a vitriolic label, increasingly damaging to the the individuals who have the condition, and eventually a new name has to be found.
Dr Langdon Down was a brilliant and compassionate physician who contributed enormously to the understanding of the condition in the 19 Century which was only decades later discovered to be caused by the an abnormality of the 21 chromosome.
Your casual and careless abuse of the term “ Down” is a vile insult not only to his work but the thousands of very fine individuals who have the condition of trisomy 21 and the legions of devoted carers, relatives, friends and professionals who look after them and respect them.
For them , I regard you with the utmost contempt.

They don't have the political power or will to do anything about it though. As soon as any politician touches anything or tries to interfere, they end up with the sort of clusterfuck we've now got in the Health department. When there was plenty of gravy to go round they didn't have to worry; they just left the suits to run things and all the right people filled their boots and did very nicely thankyou - happy days all round. Big salaries, big pensions, big budgets, big handouts, big egos, big everything...
That model of government isn't working anymore but they're so up to the neck in the old system and the old ways that they can't change it. This is what we're seeing now and for the next few years until it all goes pop.

One easy way to improve things would be to plant a few thousand trees. Unlikely to make a difference in the big scheme of things, but probably more than other countries would do per head of population.

Hello Mr. PB
A family member has alerted me to your posts and as your observations are not correct, it’s only fair that I correct them for you.
I joined the civil service on 17th May 1976 with 4 GCE “O” levels (I subsequently gained a fifth) which allowed me to join as a Clerical Assistant - the most junior rank - for which 3 O levels were required. (Sadly, no “special pass” for me to avoid entry requirements as you suggested in another of your posts). In order to be eligible for promotion to Clerical Officer I was required to pass a civil service exam and, having done so at the first attempt, was promoted to CO in late 1977. For advancement to Executive Officer a further “EO” exam pass was required (it isn’t these days) in an exam that was close in nature and content to an “A” level. Having passed this exam, also at the first attempt, I was promoted to Executive Officer in December 1983 and to Higher Executive Officer in 1986, the same year that I gained my HNC with Distinction in Public Administration. Further promotions followed and by December 1998 I was a Senior Executive Officer in the Chief Secretary’s Office - today called Cabinet Office - where I undertook two separate job roles in my time there.
By this stage recruitment to CEO posts had matured and involved an “Assessment Centre” as well as formal interview. The Assessment Centre included such elements as psychometric testing, critical problem solving and an interview with an HR psychologist. It was being subject to that regime that preceded my appointment to CEO of the Department of Home Affairs in 2001, being the first of my two CEO posts, and it was a very similar process in 2003 when I joined DHSS, just after completing all my assignments within the UK Civil Service Top Management Programme. I remained with DHSS/Department of Health for 11 years until my retirement on 31 March 2014 after a 38 year career.
So... no “special pass”, no “exam failed more than once”, just the exams/qualifications asked for by the organisation. And, not least, the pleasure of working with some great people.
I’m happy to put the record straight, as you’ve taken such a keen interest.
Kind regards
David Killip

There might, just might be a difference in what he did as to actually having to. Surviving for a week knowing you still have a house and financial back up is totally different to having nothing and wondering how you are going to pay your bills. What he achieved really was insulting to those who don't have a lot

One of the thungs that would ptevent me from standing is that I dont think the public are supporters of the shock and awe required. Id quite happy stand for one term and get the job at least underway, but I dont think folk would vote for someone pointing out the brutality of what would be required; swingeing public sector cuts, higher taxes, privatisation of some services and some recognisable austerity.

The report says, at page 6, "there are fewer GPs per head of population on the Isle of Man than in England and their workload may be unsustainable" and at page 17, "There are few standards defining what GP practices are expected to provide". It would be really helpful for me if "rules of engagement", so to speak, were set out so that we all know what is an appropriate thing to take to a GP and what is not. For example, let's take work related stress. I frequently get asked to provide sick notes for people who have had a falling out with their co-workers, or they have been suspended from work pending an investigation into something they have allegedly done, because being "off sick with stress leave" is somehow administratively easier for everyone to deal with than being "suspended on full pay" which used to be the traditional way of dealing with it. It's actually nothing at all to do with me or the health service, and employers and employees need to learn to thrash out their disagreements among themselves. There are lots of other examples I could give you, but this is just one example to illustrate the point that a lot of the stuff which GPs see is non-medical and takes up time which could be better spent elsewhere.

Very often they are not just keeping a straight face. I know advocates who defend these characters and who actually believe the barefaced lies that come out of their mouths. Some judges are the same. These people in high places are some of the most credulous of people. They live in ivory towers and the doings of the lower orders simply don't impinge on their lives. They are, therefore, ready to believe the most unlikely hard luck stories presented to them. The scum are well aware of this. They put on the "poor me" act and run rings around these very intelligent but street wisdom deficient individuals. It's a major problem.

Anyway, I think that Henderson or Cannan should have all their bank accounts blocked for a month, give them an abrahams flat and jobseekers or basic incapacity and see how they do. Because until you've lived it, you haven't got a fucking clue how your decisions at the top affect those who do.

These fairy houses, if we had to have them could have been made at schools or the college as projects for sod all and when they disintegrated the next years students, those who wanted too, could make replacements, a bit like the trees at the Airport at Christmas where the schools have a competition and enjoy doing it. This is madness in the extreme and an indication of the governments attitude to the spending of other people's money. And do not get me started about the new artwork being proposed for the roundabout at the Cooil, how long before some boy racer takes that out. Thes schemes are nothing short of misappropriation of public funds.

One of the skills of highway planning should be that roads are designed so that even poor drivers will handle them as safely as they can, not so that good ones (or ones who think they) can drive fast. Blaming the drivers would be rather missing the point, because the layout should discourage them behaving like that.
Perhaps some of the problems with Richmond Hill are caused by the DoI being infected with TT-itis and thinking that every road should become a racetrack, but it's probably more that they lack more general skills to design and implement their ideas. Certainly it never seems to have occurred to them that water runs downhill. I suspect they have an idea what a 'proper' road looks like (a motorway over a nice flat and dry landscape) and simply try to get as near to that as they can, irrespective of need, topography, local conditions, weather, safety or cost. Especially cost.

Raising taxes on fuel and phasing out oil and gas is only approaching this non-existent problem from entirely the wrong direction. Those of us of a certain age will remember the slogan, "plant a tree in '73"- but why only in 1973? Shouldn't they have repeated the tree-planting mantra over and over EVERY year, and be STILL repeating it to this day? The reason why they didn't proceed with this is because this simple, common-sense solution didn't enable them to raise taxes. It didn't provide a plausible excuse for doing so. Politicians have extremely limited imaginations. They're so lazy and incompetent that fiddling with tax rates and 'banning things'- is invariably all they come up with. PATHETIC. No vision at all.

The opportunity of ceasing the horse trams was given to Tynwald when DBC took the brave decision to stop funding a legacy transport and tourism service. The decision was then put to politicians who listened to the heritage lobby and decided to keep shoveling taxpayers money into the service. I very much doubt whether any significant number of residents actually use the horse teams as a means of transport and I assume, therefore that they are regarded as a tourist attraction. Did any research take place to demonstrate that people came to the Island to get on the horse trams? I expect not. Outside of MNH does anyone honestly believe that the long term future of tourism on the Island is best served by continued investment in quaintness? Is that what future generations of IOM-bound tourists will be looking for? I suspect that the continued capital and revenue investment in horse trams was based more on decisions to avoid short-term controversy than any long-term investment strategy based on returns or value for money. That’s not untypical, of course.

Yep,
business and personal. Not huge increases, but enough to start to make things more realistic. The big bridge of benefit has long gone, unless you are a VHNWI.
And yes, big staff cuts. When faced with similar issues, Northumbria Council shed six hundred posts. We are a village in the middle of the sea, run as if it it is a provincial city, with the additional burden of 22 intrinsic fiefdoms.
There is no sense of reality. And you are absolutely right, turkeys don’t vote for Christmas, so they ain’t going to vote in someone with that sort of Bernard Matthews approach.
The only way it would ever happen is for the Island to be run from Whitehall.

GP services come out of it pretty well, the main recommendations being that we should work more closely with other providers like nurses and pharmacists. I don't have a problem with that. What I would have liked to see more of in the report, but which of course is absent for political correctness reasons, is a request for the public to moderate their demands on the service. Most people use it sensibly, but in primary care we spend a lot of time dealing with things like anxiety, difficulty sleeping and anger / irritability management which aren't really illnesses, requests for sick notes to access social security benefits by people who aren't really sick, anxious parents with kids with temperatures and rashes (this is a normal part of life - all kids get temperatures and rashes and we can't see every kid on the island who has a temperature or a rash) and so on.
It would also have been nice if the report had been published by Tynwald instead of Manx Radio!

I know I don't voice opinions on this forum very often, and very often my comments concern the wanna be comedians (it is a profession enjoyed by those qualified by the way) who post ludicrous, nasty, personal responses that usualy derail some of the most serious posts.
This miscreant is a prime example. Definately no natural sense of humour, just argumentative for the sake of it.
Whether you agree or not, there was a time when some serious comments made politicians/'important types' squirm a bit and brought about changes...not any more. Manx Forums has become a laughing stock, just to be ignored.
If I was a bit paranoid I might suggest the efforts by certain IOMG employees on here to destroy any credibility MF had has really paid off.
How long must this misuse/abuse contiue before someone says simply (sorry 'bout this)...fuck off you horses ass...just fuck off!

Oh goodness Woody, yes, there is no disagreement that the airborne fraction is about 43% and this has increased by 0.7 ± 1.4% per decade since 1850.
What we are disagreeing about is your statement that ‘co2﻿﻿ level﻿s in the at﻿mosphere ha﻿﻿ven't chang﻿e﻿﻿d﻿﻿﻿.﻿’
They have increased from 280 odd ppm in 1850 to over 400 ppm now. The paper the press release you’ve linked to is totally in agreement with this - check out its figure 1
What you are saying is basically this:
Woody: Liverpool are having a shit season.
Chinahand: Woody, that’s bullshit.
Woody: Everton are mid table and lost to Fulham 4-nil recently.
Chinahand: Liverpool and Everton are different football teams look at the Premier League table.
Woody: 4-nil to Fulham ha ha.
Chinahand: Woody you’re misunderstanding.
Woody: 4-nil to Fulham.
Chinahand: Woody you do understand Liverpool and Everton are different football teams.
Woody: 4-nil to Fulham.
Chinahand: Woody you can go on about Everton all day but that doesn’t mean Liverpool are having a bad season.
Woody: 4-nil to Fulham.
Chinahand: Woody we are talking about Liverpool not Everton. You do understand that, don’t you.
Woody: 4-nil to Fulham.

I know it's been done to death on these boards before but why don't the just SCRAP THE F@CKING TAX IN FAVOUR OF AN UNAVOIDABLE FUEL DUTY? And save all this expense and time and labour.
ETA although they suggest at the bottom of the article that eventually revenue will be used to do away with tax discs. Yeah, after it's contributed to the pensions black hole.

Bernie Moffatt is a complete non-entity and as such should be ignored.He and the other three members of the unelected Celtic League should be placed on the runway for Saudi Target practice.No live ammunition though as you cannot do that.Not in Bernies world.You can though get a job for your daughter and when she leaves pass it on to your best mate who is otherwise unemployable...

And half the doors wouldn’t have letterboxes, so no doubt the friendly plods opened the (unlocked) doors to put the note & Keys inside.
I understand your view about borderline aiding abetting TWOC, but there’s an alternative view, it’s a statement about how (relatively) crimefree and safe the Island really is.

Park and ride in the isle of Man means leaving your car on your drive and getting the bus. We've been through this, it is simply too small and people are too hooked on their cars for it to ever work. Look at the ongoing castletown fiasco for examples of how fucking thick and lazy people are.
On the horse trams there really should have been a proper decision made at the start of the prom redesign to knock them on the head. Utterly pointless. But that decision wasn't taken, and now we're stuck with them forever, so we need to figure out how to run and use them in a better way. The current management certainly can't, their solution to everything is charge people more.

I guess it's like when you are on the only cardiac arrest team at the hospital, and there are two simultaneous cardiac arrests at opposite ends of the hospital. You can't save everyone all of the time, you just have to do the best you can with what you've got, and people need to be particularly mindful of this if they choose to live on an island.

Not a snowball in hell's chance of this Island surviving as an independent country. Neither the economic critical mass nor the political nous.
The only way they can afford to run the place currently is swindling tax arrangements (sorry, legal avoidance measures) and with the way that's being stamped out we'd be back to spuds and whiting (cos the herring have been raped to extinction) and huddling in shawls.
Dreams of nationalist twits. Champagne nationalist twits who've got fat on Govt largesse and would be the first to bail faced with the reality if it came to that.